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By Charles Spencer (****)
This is one of the earliest of Shakespeare’s
plays, possibly the first he ever wrote, and it has a lovely bloom of youth
about it. Famously it is also the play with a dog in it, a subject much
discussed in the new and wonderful production of Shakespeare in Love in the
West End, which has a splendid hound of its own.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is rarely revived — this is the first production
on the Stratford main stage for 45 years - but it’s a delightful work, and
for Shakespeare buffs absolutely fascinating as it contains the seeds of so
much that he wrote later.
This is the first of his plays in which the heroine disguises herself as a boy
to go in search of her beloved, the first in which the characters find
themselves in all kinds of trouble in a wood, the first in which love and
youth triumph over the opposition of hidebound and obstructive parents.
It all works a treat in Simon Godwin’s production, niftily designed by Paul
Wills and set in modern Italy, with a dolce vita buzz of scooters,
nightclubs and open air cafés.
The staging has a winning comic fizz but it also does justice to the play’s
more complex feelings, which at times cut surprisingly deep. There aren’t
many comedies in which one of the leading characters comes close to the object of his desire, and in Godwin’s deftly balanced staging the
supposedly happy ending has a fascinating ambivalence about it.
Below is also a trailer of some of the performance highlights:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Broadcasting Wednesday 3 September, 7pm
Tickets are £15 or £14 concessions and available to buy online, at the Box Office, or give us a call on 01584 878141
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